his experience, from, the ball-room full of lights and laughter; for Tom Kennedy was not of those whom use hardens. He was one of those to whom ever-widening vision discloses no clear horizon of dogmatic belief or unbelief, but a further distance fading away into the great, inconceivable, infinite mystery between which and him lay Life--Life, whose champion he was, whose colours he wore unflinchingly, counting neither its evil or its good. Life--nothing else. It is a queer mistress, taken so, but an absorbing one, and he scarcely slackened the rhythmic sweep of his arms even in his surprise at the figure which, after a moment's pause, stepped forward. "You ought not to have come--it's no place for you; you had better go back and send me help; though I fear it is no use," he said authoritatively. For answer she slid her hands under the blanket he had thrown over the old woman's limbs, and began to rub them with a regularity matching his own. "They would not help so well as I." "You have done it before then?" "Often--once all night long in cholera--a great friend--he died at dawn." Yet the memory which had brought tears many a time failed to touch her now, for her mind was intent on something else. "Was she unconscious when you came?" she asked. "Not quite. There were some letters on her mind, and after she had given them to me she went off--one often finds it so." Then they were given! and she was too late! Yet stay! where could they be--in his coat, of course, which he had taken off and thrown aside on a chair for the sake of greater ease. Doubtless in the coat, for he must have had it on at first, when the old woman was still conscious. "Perhaps hot water," she suggested, looking towards the kettle swinging over the dying embers, but he shook his head, and she stayed where she was. Ah! that was surely a change--a greyer tinge on the worn, wrinkled old face, the faintest suspicion of a greater rest in the slack limbs. Dr. Kennedy paused, still holding the hands in his, and bent closer. In the great silence, Mrs. Vane seemed to hear her heart beating at the thought--not of rest, but unrest; for something would have to be done soon, if done at all. Nay! done now, for with a half-impatient sigh the doctor gave up the struggle, folded the old hands upon the old breast, and walked away to stand for a moment or two looking moodily into the dull fire. "It is always a disappointment," he said, turning to her again, and mechanically going over to the dresser, where in the interval, calculating on habit, she had set a bowl of water and a towel. And she calculated rightly. As with his back towards her he washed his hands, hers were in the pocket of his coat, and two packets of letters lay on the floor behind the chair, as if they had slipped out, before she went forward, coat in hand.